An arm for Raysa

Raysa Fernandez was a normal 16–year–old schoolgirl in Jaguey Gran, when her life was turned upside–down when she was diagnosed with cancer. Cuban doctors amputated her right shoulder and arm in order to stem the disease and save her life.

At their first meeting on the day after her arrival from Havana, Tampa prosthetist Waldo Esparza, at right, tells Raysa, center, that they have much in common: he too is from Cuba and lost his left leg in an accident when he was a teenager. Raysa is the second young cancer survivor from Cuba that a small group of humanitarians, including Arnold Andrews, at left, has helped to acquire prostheses and physical therapy.

After wrapping Raysa's torso and right shoulder with plastic wrap, Esparza makes a cast that will be used for a preliminary mould for the base of the shoulder support.

Two days after creating the initial shoulder casting, Esparza fits the polymer base that will help support Raysa's shoulder and prosthetic arm.

After trimming, smoothing and completing the fit of the base, Esparza aligns and marks the locations for hardware that will be embedded to secure the harness and metal arm structure.

At the beginning of the second week, intern prosthetist, Art Gagne, and Esparza make a second plaster cast over the base support. This cast will be used to cover the base and will help to fill out the shoulder area.

Raysa contemplates the skeleton of her new arm as she waits in the examination room for Esparza to return after making adjustments to the fit of the shoulder covering. Esparza takes great care to insure her comfort. "When you return to Cuba, I won’t have the opportunity for follow-up visits," he tells the teenager, "so it must be right, it must be perfect."

At her final appointment with Waldo, two days before she is scheduled to return to Cuba, Raysa looks over her new arm. "Unfortunately," Esparza laments, "the arm is more cosmetic than functional, because she lost her shoulder too."

After one month away from home for the first time, Raysa is greeted at Jose Marti Airport in Havana on her arrival in Cuba by her parents, Pedro and Marisol. Two days later, her father commented about how his daughter is beginning to regain her confidence. "My daughter is no longer fearful to leave her room and is beginning to go into public again."

For nearly all of her ninth grade school year, Raysa Fernandez kept her secret.

It wasn’t until she couldn’t brush her curly blonde locks without pain that she knew she had to tell someone. So, the Cuban teenager confided in her mother about the large lump that was growing in her armpit and the pain she was experiencing.

Raysa’s mother took her to the medical clinic in their hometown of Jagüey Grande, about 100 miles southeast of Havana. The doctors there decided not to remove the mass when they observed its deep roots, but took a sample for biopsy purposes. Three months later, with a detour through the hospital in Mantanzas City, the 16–year–old was admitted to Instituto Nacional de Oncologia y Radiobiologia in Havana.

When she was discharged ten months later, she left without her right shoulder and arm. But, before leaving she made many new friends including Carmen Vallejo who operates a support group for youngsters with cancer in Havana. She also gained an inner strength and a solid determination to learn to do everything she did before with her right arm with her left.

Two years later, in April of 2005, Raysa traveled to Tampa, where Arnold Andrews, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of St. Petersburg made arrangements for the teenager to receive a prosthetic arm. For the second time in one year, Andrews begged and cajoled old friends to raise the necessary funds so that a Cuban child could receive a prosthetic limb.

On May 28, 2005, Raysa returned to Cuba with a new arm and renewed hope.